Bazerman

Bazerman, Charles. Shaping Written Knowledge 1988

• The genre and activity of the experimental article in science. Traces the history and character of the experimental article, calling attention to the social and rhetorical forces that shaped its development. Traces the Royal society forward.
• Identifies experimental report as distinctive genre, a product of social interaction among researchers and a leading element in the context in which scientific discourse is produced.
• Even if scientists don’t realize they employ rhetoric (would piss off Ramus and Descartes)
• Not a comprehensive historical survey of the experimental report but does excavate various layers of its archeology (Jan Golinski, Making Knowledge Natural).
• Suggests the key role textual exchanges play in remaking laboratory practices and forging a social enterprise focused on theorizing findings rather than as (initially) recipes and marvels.
• Notes the centrality of writing to scientific and technical practices
• Three chapters on Early Royal Society, three on Twentieth C. Physics, Two on contemporary Social Sciences.
• Golinski sees Bazerman’s book as flawed, too uniform due to empirical evidence chosen and too eager to fit all into a pattern of progress!
• Bazerman says what a text is must take into account how people create it and how people use it.
• the truth is “the power of language can only be understood in the context of social action in specific situations” But written language is also powerful .
• Queries and objections serve as correctives of the original work—in the case of Newton, causing revision and rethinking
• Rhetorical constitution of metaphor –conversation among metalinguistic metaphors is rhetorical – questions of ethical value
• rhetoric - the study of how people use language and other symbols to realize human goals and carry out human activities
  - a practical study offering people greater control over their symbolic activity
  - the study of all areas of symbolic activity

“Speech Acts, Genre, and Activity Theory" (2003)

• Speech acts, social facts, genres, genre systems, and activity systems suggest how people use text to create new realities of meaning, relation, and knowledge
• Texts are embedded in structured social activities and depend on previous texts that influence that social activity and social organization
• Each successful text creates a social fact for its readers. Social facts consist of meaningful social actions accomplished through language or speech acts. The acts are patterned, typical (therefore intelligible) forms or genres, which are related to other texts and genres that occur in related circumstances. Together, they fit together as genre sets within genre systems, which are part of systems of human activity.
• Understanding genres and how they work in the systems an help writers identify and fulfill needs of situation
• Social facts – those things people believe to be true (doxa ) – primarily on things that are matters of social understanding
• Speech Acts (Austin and Searle) – words do things – every statement does something – all utterances are speech acts; three-level analysis (locutionary – what is said, illocutionary – what act is intended, perlocutionary --actual consequences of what is said)
• Genre – a means of coordinating our speech acts through patterns – recognizable, self-reinforcing forms of communication = genres
• Genre as psycho-social recognition - --parts of processes of socially organized activity – genres are social facts about the types of speech acts people can make and the ways that they make them.
• Genre Set – collection of types of texts someone in a particular role is likely to produce
• Genre System – captures regular sequences of how one genre follows on another in the typical communication flows of a group of people.
• Activity System – framework that organizes work, attention, and accomplishment – what people are doing and how texts help them do it

Writing Across the Curriculum: A Guide to Developing Programs